


To my Dearest Cody

by EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - World War I, Historical References, I'm Bad At Tagging, Longing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Poetry, Rainshowers, References to Period Typical Homophobia but Nothing Explicit, Secret Relationship, Severe Injury, Soldiers, To Anakin, Victorian Language Conventions, War, War Letters, ambiguous ending, gas attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:34:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29974677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12/pseuds/EwanMcGregorIsMyHomeboy12
Summary: ....As I mentioned prior, enclosed on this sheet of paper is a poem one of the men taught me—by a fellow Scotsman of course, who I am sad to say knew only the first two verses. It makes my thoughts wander to you and that insurmountable feeling of having you by my side. I do hope you enjoy it as much as I have.Faithfully Yours,Captain O. Kenobi212th British Platoon
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 8
Kudos: 59





	To my Dearest Cody

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meantforinfinitesadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meantforinfinitesadness/gifts).



> So I don't know why I wanted to write this AU so badly, but its been buzzing in my mind for several days. The interplay of the war and the values of the era with what happens in canon I think is just enough to have intrigued me. 
> 
> I really hope you enjoy it! I very much enjoyed writing it! And finding all the poems. (To nerd out for a moment, each poem is from a different year in the war, corresponding to when the letter takes place. My intention is that these are not all of their letters of course, but only a few!) 
> 
> Gifted to meantforinfitinitesadness, mostly just for fun! Thank you for being such a supportive creator in the community; your comments and tag shares never fail to make my day--not to mention how much I look forward to your writing! I hope you enjoy the piece :) 
> 
> As always, find me on tumblr at this same name. Requests remain open :)

My dearest Cody,  
I do hope this reaches you before the holiday, or else the small poem I’ve included will be of little use. Things are quiet here, a fact for which I am grateful. Your presence lingers, a fact that has made me feel an indeterminate way since it only makes your absence loom larger.

Anakin and I have been fighting again—he believes that there is an end to this war that means a total victory. I do not know whether this is optimistic or foolishly naïve, or whether or not I have simply become cynical enough in the past few weeks that I can no longer tell the difference. I do not believe that we will lose; our character and morals remain steadfast, but there is a difference between winning and simply not losing. I do not think—in this war fought for inches of useless ground—that there will be much victory at the end of it.

Another of the men has been shot in the hand. You and I spoke of this when you were here, and I cannot blame them for their choice to allow themselves such injuries. I, too long for a visit back to the seaside; I am certain that the war seems very far away when one is in Aberdeen Bay, but I could never bring myself to make such a choice. I think it has come as a result of the last round of gas that came upon the trench. Most of the platoon were stationed on the far side and wind was blessedly flowing away from the food stores, but there were some that were not so lucky. This man is the third to allow himself to be injured in such a way—after seeing the aftermath of the gas, I am not so certain I can blame him for his cowardice.

It is starting to snow here. I have seen snow in France only once before when we traveled to Paris in the winter and even then it was only on the train. I thought it was beautiful then. Now, I think it is only cold and wet and full of all of the misery that has accompanied this past year of living in the dirt. I have thought often of Christmas last when you were here. It is perhaps cruel of me to long for days earlier in the war, when we are now closer to its inevitable closing.

I wish I could see you again soon. I know it is a folly and that these letters will have to do for now, but I long for more than simple ink and paper to speak with you. Someday, I will take you with me to Aberdeen, to the shale beds and rocks faces and you can see the place where I first learned to swim. If you would like to go, that is. I would like to take you. Someday, when that night we met is a distant memory and there is everything else behind us.

Even though it is nothing compared to the sound of your voice here with me, I long to hear of how you’re doing. I keep close to hear the thought that you are somewhere warmer, though I dare say it isn’t so based on what we have heard. How are the men in your new platoon? Does your promotion keep you back from the front?

As I mentioned prior, enclosed on this sheet of paper is a poem one of the men taught me—a fellow Scotsman of course, who I am sad to say knew only the first two verses. It makes my thoughts wander to you and that insurmountable feeling of having you by my side. I do hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Faithfully Yours,  
Captain O. Kenobi  
212th British Platoon

**On Heaven**  
Ford Maddox Ford

_On the morrow the bitter frost that there was!_ _  
That night my young love lay in my arms,  
The morrow how bitter it was!  
  
  
And because she is very tall and quaint  
And golden, like a quattrocento saint,  
i desire to write about Heaven;  
To tell you the shape and the ways of it,  
And the joys and the toil in the maze of it,  
For these there must be in Heaven,  
Even in Heaven!_

My dearest Cody,  
It is difficult for me to write, without proper means of expression, the degree of joy which your last letter brought me. They were able to deliver it before the start of the new year’s dawn, and I was able to hold that bit of you here with me as light dawned on what I do feel will be a new beginning. I was able to share your story of Rex with Anakin, who found the whole episode rather amusing. I do hope that the milk crates were able to recover as well as you were.

I’m afraid that is most of the joy that I can share with you. Other than the shift from snow to deeper snow, there is little that has changed here. We remain in this same area, though the men have managed to dig another few miles further afield and the space of no man’s land is rather smaller than it was. But otherwise, there is little to report in terms of change. It seems that news comes each day that only makes the outcome seem more bleak. The Americans are yet to join us; many here doubt that they will.

The largest point of light is that we have lost no men since I last wrote. It seems that the last of the cowards have fled and those who remain are steadfast. There are new men—and though it brings my heart no joy to see them subjected to this, it is good to have a full crew again and the faces of younger, fresher men does bring a certain lightness to the air. One of the men, an Irishman, has an excellent voice and often sings _Long Way to Tipperary_ if he can be caught in a good mood after a meal.

Perhaps the most exceptional thing to have happened is the crate of books that arrived just prior to Christmas. Most of them I have read, but that has not stopped me from indulging in the evenings. It is unclear where the crate came from, though I have many suspicions it was my father who has sent them—the crate contained also perhaps two dozen editions of the local post. It is good to see pictures of home again—It does not make long for it any more than I do already. There is nothing that could increase that longing, I daresay.

I wonder how it is that you are doing? I so enjoyed your last letter, I do hope you will have time to write another soon. I have never been to Belgium, and in spite of the circumstances, it sounds as though it might be a place for us to return to someday. I have perhaps seem enough of France for a time, but I do think of what it would be for us to go to Paris. Anakin has reminded me of my fondness for pain au chocolate and I realized I did not know whether you cared for chocolate. I wait with baited breath to know the answer. 

Contained here, as I suppose you expected, is another poem I have had the pleasure of learning. I look often for those things that make me think of you, and this one I thought made me remember the feel of your hand in my own. It is not often that I allow myself to think of such things; I believe Anakin is the only one who suspects anything at all, and I do not answer his questions. Least of all those about you.

Yours in Sincerity,  
Captain O. Kenobi  
212th British Platoon

****

**The Fallings Leaves**  
Margaret Postgate Cole  
  


_Today, as I rode by,  
I saw the brown leaves dropping from their tree  
In a still afternoon,  
When no wind whirled them whistling to the sky,  
But thickly, silently,  
They fell, like snowflakes wiping out the noon;  
And wandered slowly thence  
For thinking of a gallant multitude  
Which now all withering lay,  
Slain by no wind of age or pestilence,  
But in their beauty strewed  
Like snowflakes falling on the Flemish clay._

My dearest Cody,

I find myself writing this to you in a rare moment of high spirits—they are so hard to come by these past months that I could not bring myself to write to you with only ill news. There is the news from home of course, my father knew two of the Americans aboard the ship. I daresay this may be what draws them to our cause, but I ache to think of the cost.

In my last letter, I wrote to you quickly of what happened to Anakin. I have more detail now, sent from his fiancée in Yorkshire—His arm is lost for good and he remains in recovery. But it is this news that has given me the spirits to write you—They do think he will live! The news almost took for a song this morning, though I fear anything in those high spirits might have caused a riot among the men forced to listen to my singing.

Please do not think that I have neglected to write out of an abatement of devotion. On the contrary, I have oft spent hours pouring over the letters you write me now and think more of the words they contain. It is simply my own distress that has kept me from writing—It is wrong to think that I may shield you from the horrors that I see here when I know that where you are must be so similar. But I cannot bring myself to write to you words that seem cruel when I wish instead to write of the spring that has come to the area.

I have never seen quite so many flowers. In Aberdeen, as I told you often, it is thistle and the mountain bonnets that are so beautiful this time of year. Here though, in the fields that mask the Germans behind them, they are delicate things. It is pleasant, I think, to think that there may still be delicate things in the midst of this and after we have returned home again.

I wonder how we will feel after the conclusion of this. I think often of those moments when we would touch—Your fingers were light as a passing breeze and there are moments, when I can look up and see only the stars overheard out of this hole we are living in, when I could swear that I could feel them again. That I might turn and you would be next to me again, just as you were. I realize this is a childish dream—a man’s folly, but that does not keep me from wishing it were so. It gives me a strange comfort and a perhaps worse ache to think that you might perhaps think of me, and of our time together, similarly.

I wait in anticipation for your next letter, even though I know this one will be well traveled before its arrival. As always, I have enclosed a new passage I have learned. It is with regret that the men to replace Anakin’s squadron after the attack have come, but they bring with them new knowledge and for this, I must find it in my heart to be grateful.

Yours in Sincerity,  
Captain O. Kenobi  
212th British Platoon

**Easter, 1916**  
William Butler Yeats

_Hearts with one purpose alone_ _  
Through summer and winter seem  
Enchanted to a stone  
To trouble the living stream.  
The horse that comes from the road,  
The rider, the birds that range  
From cloud to tumbling cloud,  
Minute by minute they change;  
A shadow of cloud on the stream  
Changes minute by minute;  
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,  
And a horse plashes within it;  
The long-legged moor-hens dive,  
And hens to moor-cocks call;  
Minute by minute they live:  
The stone's in the midst of all._

My dearest Cody,

I woke only yesterday morning to the sure feeling that you were beside me. When I turned there, a boy lay in the mud. He had been killed the night before and I had lain beside his body all night and had not noticed. I had not even heard the shot for the pouring of the rain last night. For a moment, only the briefest of moments, I feared it was truly you lying there. I am ashamed to say that upon learning the truth, I felt relief first, before horror. And now it is guilt, as I write this after sending the notice to his family. The man’s name was Caleb which I write now to ensure I remember it—though I must say that I could not imagine ever forgetting it now.

I have learned too of my father’s passing. The letter Padme wrote said it was peaceful, that his last words were speaking of Anakin and I with fondness and that funeral had been quiet as well. I hope they will have buried him at sea—he was always most at peace at the bay, but I would think Anakin would want him in the cemetery with his mother. Padme did not say, so I shall have to see when I return home. I should write them, but do not seem able to find the words to share with them.

The bright spot in Padme’s letter is that Anakin is up and about again. She was worried, I fear, that he might still die from complications with his arm, but it seems he has surpassed the greatest trial. She has told me they will wed as soon as I can be home with them again to attend the ceremony—Anakin would hear of nothing sooner. The thought, I think, was more warming than even the sun has been. And it has been sweltering here as of late.

I was naïve to think that the river nearby would stave off the heat—only the rains provide some relief but I cannot pray for them for the misery they bring. I have grown used to sleeping in the rain, which has never been in my plan for things to grow used to, but many of the men have not. A rainstorm means a stunted silence-- that is perhaps the worst of this. Only the sound of shells is worse than that silence.

There is one benefit to the rain—I daresay. I think of that first night we spent out in the rain together, huddling under the tarps. It kept the others away, at least, and gave us those few moments. They linger at the very edge of my dreams where I dare not let my mind wander too often. I would much rather remember those moments in the rain than awakening to find Caleb as I did.

I look forward to your next letter and further news of both you and Rex and the other men of your battalion. I grow tired of the French countryside—or these bits of it at least—and your words offer the briefest reprieve and thoughts that there remains another place out there. I look at the sky often and imagine if it is what you are seeing. The constellations of stars have changed, though I acknowledge for you they must look different from my own sight. It is nice to imagine that in our time passing that we might both be able to see it moving overhead in the same clip—simply to know that you are there under the same sky is enough at times.

As always, I have folded in a poem from one of the newspapers that we have been sent. I thought when father passed that would be the last of them, but I suspect it is Padme who continues to have them sent. This one which makes me think of you, of course. But also of Caleb. I do wonder who it is that he has left behind. I cannot allow my thoughts to linger on such things and will instead think of what our future might hold. I think of you in Aberdeen at times. Or elsewhere. Wherever I am, it is with you by my side. And that will be more than enough.

Yours in Sincerity,  
Captain O. Kenobi  
212th British Platoon

**To His Love**  
Ivor Gurney

_He's gone, and all our plans_

_Are useless indeed._

_We'll walk no more on Cotswold_

_Where the sheep feed_

_Quietly and take no heed._

_His body that was so quick_

_Is not as you_

_Knew it, on Severn river_

_Under the blue_

_Driving our small boat through._

_You would not know him now ..._

_But still he died_

_Nobly, so cover him over_

_With violets of pride_

_Purple from Severn side._

_Cover him, cover him soon!_

_And with thick-set_

_Masses of memoried flowers—_

_Hide that red wet_

Thing I must somehow forget.

My dearest Cody,  
I write now with the joy of a man far younger than myself. These past four years have aged me in ways that I dare not think of too much or else they might catch up to me all at once. These past three years, separated from you, have been decades of time compressed into mindless days. But now, the war is drawing to its close! And glory be to whomever has willed it this way!

The news has come to our unit that the Germans are in retreat. Only a handful of sieges remain; I cannot say by whom or when in case this were to be intercepted, but only that I know my last forward march will be soon. The weight of that from my shoulders will be immense and pave the path towards home. Many of the men have bought their return tickets to home—I have not done so quite yet. I do not wish to tempt fate when it has treated me as kindly as it has for the duration of this war.

Some predict the war will end by October. Padme has written me saying that she thinks it will likely be November. One month or two—in this never-ending struggle that final ending will make little difference. I long for it, but I am willing to wait so that it may be drawn properly to its close. If it does end so soon, this may be last letter from the encampment. It may be best not to send more here—after our final froward assault, I expect we will be recalled. I will send you mail from the address where you should be able to reach me. The thought alone, of simply walking to the post box, is far more thrilling than it should be.

We must talk about what it is that we plan to do when we are done. But I’m afraid I must end my correspondence here. The post will leave soon and I want to be certain not to miss it. I long to see you, to feel, to hold you once more. With God’s hand acting in our favor, that moment may be sooner than it has seemed since your first departure. I ask only you pray for this last mission we have, and think of me when your own time allows, so that I might be carried on your thoughts until we meet again.

I have included no poem this time. I shall find a cheerful one to send when I am home in Aberdeen. Having this goal to finish may perhaps make it more likely to come true.

Faithfully Yours,  
Captain O. Kenobi  
212th British Platoon

****

****

**Futility**  
Wilfred Owen

_Move him into the sun—_

_Gently its touch awoke him once,_

_At home, whispering of fields half-sown._

_Always it woke him, even in France,_

_Until this morning and this snow._

_If anything might rouse him now_

_The kind old sun will know._

_Think how it wakes the seeds—_

_Woke once the clays of a cold star._

_Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides_

_Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?_

_Was it for this the clay grew tall?_

_—O what made fatuous sunbeams toil_

_To break earth's sleep at all?_


End file.
